Mitchell's Ice Cream move to Ohio City expected in spring of 2013

The Plain DealerModa nightclub, which closed in 2006, will be the new home of locally owned Mitchell's Ice Cream by spring. It, too, will have late night hours.

Mitchell's Ice Cream will move its production facilities into Ohio City by this spring, said Mike Mitchell, partner with his brother Pete in the local seven-store company.

"If all goes well," he added while talking to an audience at Mayor Frank Jackson's Sustainable Cleveland 2019 Summit on Thursday. The gathering continues Friday (9/21) at Public Auditorium.

The previously announced intention to move from Rocky River will relocate the main production facility into the former MODA nightclub, which much earlier served as a vaudeville house.

"The theater has 34-foot-high ceilings and wood trusses," said Mitchell. "The whole kitchen will be on display. People will see us juicing fruit, steeping herbs and roasting nuts." The freezers will also be part of that location.

"You're gonna smell it and hear it when you walk into the shop," he said. Mitchell also announced that he expects his new University Circle store will open by December.

His comments were part of a discussion about the value of local foods at the annual summit. Mitchell said he and his brother always did some business with local producers, back when people thought it was the fun and folksy thing to do.

"Now it's become an ideology for us," he said. They were influenced by family members in the land conservancy and health fields, but they've also been convinced by what he called a better, fresher product locally.

When it moves production to Ohio City, Mitchell's Ice Creams will become closer neighbors with some of its current sources. One is Rising Star Coffee, a new local roaster. Another is Great Lakes Brewing Company, which commissions Mitchell's to make Edmund Fitzgerald Porter Chocolate Chip flavor for the restaurant.

The main ingredient Mitchell's uses is a foamy beer byproduct that cannot be bottled.

"We're gonna do it with all their beers," said Mitchell. "It's kinda sad to think about beer being dumped down the drain."

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